Early Friday morning, FBI agents conducted a pre-dawn raid on the Bethesda, Maryland residence of former national security advisor John Bolton. The operation, reportedly set in motion by FBI Director Kash Patel, forms part of a revived inquiry into Bolton’s handling of classified documents, according to The New York Post.

Around 7 a.m., federal agents quietly descended on the suburban home. Patel, in a terse and cryptic post on X, offered only this: “NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission.” His comment arrived shortly after the agents moved in, injecting further intrigue into what was already a high‑profile development.

This latest chapter in the Bolton investigation harks back to his 2020 memoir, The Room Where It Happened. During the Trump administration, efforts were made to block the book’s publication, with concerns raised that it breached nondisclosure agreements and revealed sensitive national security information. Although the Justice Department launched an investigation in September 2020, it largely stalled under the Biden administration after failing to yield any charges.

Now, under Patel’s leadership, the case is back in the spotlight. The raid in Bethesda signals a renewed focus on evaluating whether Bolton improperly handled or retained classified materials—even as Bolton remains a vocal critic of former President Trump’s foreign policy.

On Thursday, just one day before the raid, Patel dropped another bombshell: newly declassified memos implicating former FBI Director James Comey in authorizing classified leaks during the 2016 election. These memos reportedly show that Comey permitted disclosure of sensitive information to the press—and then misled Congress about it.

One memo references U.S. Postal Inspection Service investigators who attributed disclosure of classified material to The New York Times in October 2016 to former FBI General Counsel James Baker. He, in turn, said he believed he was acting on direct orders from Comey via Chief of Staff James Rybicki. If accurate, the revelations suggest a coordinated effort to inform the media—but with little transparency.

Patel framed the unsealing of these memos as a step toward restoring transparency to an agency he accused of misleading the American public and lawmakers. “These newly declassified memos show how former FBI leadership authorized classified leaks and withheld the truth from Congress and the American people,” Patel said. He credited President Trump’s emphasis on transparency for facilitating the disclosure.

But it wasn’t just Patel sounding the alarm. Former Florida Governor and current Attorney General Pam Bondi, who intervened to lift redactions on these memos, labeled the alleged behavior “abhorrent.” She’s since put together a strike force to dig deeper into the matter. Her deputy, Harmeet Dhillon, even suggested that some of the actions could qualify as federal civil rights violations, punishable under legal statutes governing abuses of authority.

Beyond the immediate revelations, Patel is casting a wide net, treating the alleged 2016 leaks as part of a broader, decade-long intelligence overreach—tying together the Russia investigation, the leaks probe, and the Mar-a-Lago raid. Legal experts, noting the gravity of the claims, warn that if these constitute ongoing conspiracies or espoinage-adjacent offenses, prosecutable actions could fall under a law offering up to 10 years for classified leaks that damage national security.

Meanwhile, Bolton himself, once a staunch ally of President Trump but later a harsh critic, has not commented publicly on the raid. His departure from the administration was marked by frequent appearances on cable news, where he lambasted Trump’s foreign policy decisions. As of now, no further details have been announced regarding the scope of the raid or the current status of the investigation.

What’s clear is that the case is far from closed. Agents operating under Patel’s directive are signaling a new era of federal scrutiny, one that spans from the highest levels of intelligence operations down to the publication of a presidential memoir. In seeking accountability, legal authorities appear ready to revisit the unresolved questions of a politically fraught past—and perhaps close some of the unfinished business that was shelved under the previous administration.

Stay tuned: this developing story promises to unearth more revelations in the coming days.